She swallowed, not sure how that tied in with his reason to marry her. “You don’t have to marry me to have me in your life.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, stroking his thumb pad along her cheek. “But I want to marry you, Madison.”
Her head spun. Or maybe it was the room spinning. Either way, she was overcome with dizziness. “Why would you want to marry me?”
His mouth curled at the corners. “Why wouldn’t I want to marry you? You’re everything to me, Madison. Everything.”
“But…” She stared at him.
“I want you. Only you. Haven’t you figured that out?”
No, she definitely hadn’t.
“But you…the past few weeks…you shut me out.”
“Because I was stupid,” he snorted. “And trying to figure all this out. And scared. I was very scared.”
“Why would you be scared?”
“Because you held the power to hurt me.”
“Because I might be pregnant with your baby?”
“Because I wanted you pregnant with my baby.”
Reeling from his admission, Madison sagged against him, welcoming his arms around her, drawing her nearer even though she didn’t fully understand what he was saying.
He pressed a kiss to her hair, another.
“I wanted my baby inside you, Madison, because it gave me an excuse to marry you. One that didn’t require me admitting I had feelings for you.”
Was it possible he was saying what she thought he was saying?
“I didn’t realize that until tonight when my father, well, he said something that made me look at my feelings for you more closely. I wanted you pregnant with my child, because I wanted that bond with you. A bond that would tie us together for ever.”
Oh, dear sweet heaven above. She was dreaming. Had to be. Must be.
“And now there’s no…” his voice broke “…baby.”
He’d really wanted her to be pregnant?
It didn’t seem possible. She’d ached for him so often over the past month, ached to have his arms around her, to have him holding her, to have him inside her, loving her.
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
He stroked his hand down the side of her face. “Believe.”
“But why?”
“Why?” This time it was him who shrugged, him who looked vulnerable, him who sat at a precarious precipice of fate. “Because I love you, Madison.”
Ding. Ding. Ding. Time out.
“You love me?”
“I even loved a baby who didn’t exist outside our minds. Because he or she would have been our baby. A part of me and you, something we’d created together.”
No, she didn’t think him crazy at all.